Electrical Accidents: Lessons Learned

EC&M’s Forensic Casebook is one of the magazine’s most popular and enduring departments, as well as the winner of numerous business-to-business journalism accolades in the trade publishing industry over the last 10 years (including a finalist for multiple Jesse H. Neal Awards, American Society of Business Press Editors Awards, and the Western Publication Association’s Maggie Award). This department enables design engineers, electrical technicians/electricians, and plant facility personnel to learn real-world lessons from others’ mistakes in the field by taking an in-depth look at specific electrical accidents from a forensic engineering perspective. Demonstrating the consequences of carelessness, taking shortcuts, or the failure to follow proper safety procedures, Forensic Casebook has featured accident analysis for almost every situation imaginable — dairy farm electrocutions, stray voltage shocks, mismatched capacitor failures, overhead power line contact incidents, houseboat electrocutions, arc flash blasts, transformer failures, and gen-set fires. But most importantly, this department reinforces on a monthly basis just how critical safety is in the electrical industry. Because our issue theme this month is “Health and Safety,” we decided to present some of our readers’ favorite and most memorable Forensic Casebook lessons over the years.